The app: I enjoyed playing with Natalie’s program; if one does not look at the code, the colors and shapes come as a surprise, which seems appropriate to the theme. It meets almost all of the requirements (it doesn’t display the current mode, but all of the other relevant information is there). She noted that importing the turtle shape (which I thought an excellent idea) meant that one could not change the color. I actually don’t see this as a problem; in the Mondrian mode, the color of the objects does change, so switching to the background for the Pollock mode makes for good variety (in the code as well as for the user). The combination of clicks and keys also keeps it interesting. My only suggestion as far as usability might be to stop the paint from covering the directions at the bottom, but that might be difficult to code (and it’s also rather fitting, if one thinks about it as the artist getting excited and erasing the pre-established societal rules). The transition into and between modes was so smooth that I almost forgot to comment on it, but I remember how long it took me to get mine working and so am impressed.

The code: The code meets all of the requirements. It’s clearly organized; the use of the modules makes it easy to parse out, and the comments help. Natalie’s use of the ‘for’ loops to change the size of the boxes works very well, as does the list of colors. She mentioned that the Pollock screen does not reset completely; I think that could be solved by adding something to the resetp() function that clears the Pollock turtle. If there is a screen.bgcolor(“white”) command in the function also, that might work.

The process: Natalie’s final milestones are very specific, which she mentions helped keep her on track. Going back to her first set of goals, I can see how she stuck with the concept but found the specific techniques required to realize it. As such, the milestones weren’t adapted so much as focused. This makes sense to me, as having specific milestones before one has a plan for completing them can be frustrating and waste time. Natalie’s approach seems very effective. The unfinished milestone about keeping instructions outside of the drawing box relates to my earlier comment about covering them with paint, so it’s clear that she saw the issue as well; instead of erasing the milestone, she kept it to show how the project could go further.

Self-reflection: We ended up with very different methods of organizing our code. Natalie’s use of the modules is actually more what I envisioned doing at the beginning, but it worked out differently because of the ways we divided up our functions. Mine were all tied in to each other, so separating them out into clear modules didn’t work. One of the main differences is the way we set up the modes. Natalie has a clicky function that encompasses both setups, where mine diverge completely after the setup screen. I suspect that her code is easier to read overall, but both function well. I think that I spent more time on the look of the app (getting all of the text centered and such) while she spent more on making the code efficient. I do like that we both went with themes, which made developing milestones easier; the context of the concepts also adds a level of interest for the user. I enjoyed seeing the very different (but both effective) approaches that we took to the project.